RSS
Home
Strange Snow Leopard features
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Is Snow Leopard yawning at its missing and
changed features?
There is little doubt that Apple’s Snow Leopard is a worthwhile upgrade. But while it gives much it also takes away and changes some features.
Snow Leopard changes the manner in which file associations occur within the Operating System. As Rob Griffiths points out in his MacWorld column, “Apple has arbitrarily changed the role creator codes play in determining what application will open a given document.
"Regardless of that file’s name or file extension, your expectation is that the selected file will open in the application you used to create it. In all previous releases of OS X—and every Mac OS before it that I can recall—that’s exactly what happens.”
Strangely, this is not what happens with Snow Leopard. Instead double-clicking a file in the Finder may open an entirely different application than you were expecting.
I got hit with this unwelcome "feature" after installing the very useful Kigo Video Converter. I use the application to convert between video formats. Snow Leopard launches it whenever I double-click an MP4 video file instead of opening the desired QuickTime Player application. If I want to open the MP4 file with QuickTime, I am forced to open it from within QuickTime and not the Finder.
By enduring some extra pain, I can option-click the file in Finder and then select QuickTime Player as the preferred application for that particular file. This works, but unfortunately it appears that I have to do this manually with each and every file. Given that I have over 400 videos, this is an especially troubling change caused by Snow Leopard. Isn't an Operating System supposed to make life easier and not harder?
Snow Leopard’s highly touted Apple Mail Microsoft Exchange capability is one of the reasons that I was the first on my block to buy a copy of Snow Leopard. (The Apple store manager was still opening the shipment when I arrived bright and early on the day of Snow Leopard’s release.) I appreciate not having to use Microsoft's lame Entourage client. This is thanks to Snow Leopard's ability to use Exchange e-mail, contact and calendering services. However, for me, Snow Leopard’s big miss is that Apple Mail can’t set up an Exchange away (out of the office) message. Instead you need to use Mail rules—a strange omission of an important feature that even Entourage supports.
Do these issues cause me to dislike Snow Leopard? No, not at all. Do I find them an annoyance and, in some cases, counterproductive? Yes indeed! Do I hope that Apple will address these glitches in a future upgrade of Snow Leopard? Absolutely! Business users rely on these kinds of functions and they shouldn’t be missing or arbitrarily changed by something as essential as an Operating System.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
